In this powerful episode, Joe Kelley welcomes Mic Murphy and David Frank of The System, the groundbreaking NYC duo known for their futuristic blend of funk, R&B, and electronic music. They reflect on their rise from the underground scene to working with icons like Prince, Rick James, and Madonna, and share insights into their creative process and long-standing partnership. The conversation also explores their socially conscious new single, “People Get Up,” featuring Sandra St. Victor and Grandmaster Melle Mel, and how the band continues to evolve while staying true to their message and musical legacy.

🎙️ Musicians Reveal with Joe Kelley features legendary and emerging funk, R&B, and Prince-associated artists. On air since 1982 and now spanning five decades, the show was personally spotlighted by Prince on his website in 2004. He also gifted us the One Nite Alone box set in 2002 — before any other media outlet.

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Okay.

That's a standout track from one of my favorite bands.

38 years these guys have been together making great music.

And we are honored to have on the show once again.

Joe Kelly, radio the great system.

The system with David Frank and Mike Murphy.

How you doing, fellas?

Doing great job.

Yeah, thanks to come out, and we haven't spoken in a few years, and a lot has changed with everybody, but you guys are still making fantastic music.

And what's it been like since March or whenever you guys kind of went into the hub or the bubble?

Well, it's been okay.

You know, it's kind of just a lot of opportunity to write more music.

Right?

And you both have home studios, right?

Yes.

Yes, we do.

But you know what we misses?

You know, we would go East Coast, West coast every month or so, you know, to work on the record.

So kind of missing that where, you know, we would, you know, we send the music back and forth to each other, but then we get together to kind of refine it a little bit and kind of talk each other through in the same room, which is always, you know, it's always great.

It's always.

I'm not.

It's always a little better.

And David's been out in California how many.

How many years you've been out there?

I've been out here for a long time, actually, since the early nineties.

Okay.

But we've.

But like Mike said, we'd go back and forth.

You know, I went to New York a lot.

He came.

He'd come out here, so.

Right, you got.

You guys both.

Both chose the two most expensive places around.

Right.

To live.

So you're talking about music and the great new track, the video that's up on YouTube.

People get up from the system featuring Sandra St.

Victor and grandmaster Mellie.

Mel, talk about you guys collaborating on this.

And it really hits for times like these.

Right?

Yeah.

Well, I mean, Mike, go ahead.

Okay.

So we actually got together, I guess it's, like, about two years ago, Dave in LA, because like I said, we would.

I would go to LA, he would come to New York, and we would get in the same room and at least, you know, kind of start.

Start cooking up some cooking up material.

David might have a few tracks that he already started and play them for me, and, you know, I'd be out there probably for a week, and over the course of that week, I'd add ideas to what he started and we'd get together to kind of collaborate.

So this was one of those from two and a half years ago.

And at the time, it was like a lot of the civil unrest of Black Lives Matter movement were reaching a peak.

And I kind of think it was around the Michael Brown era.

I'm not exactly sure what the events were, but I was watching tv and I was listening to the track, and automatically the idea started popping into my head, not just as adding fuel to the fire of Black Lives Matter, but to bring about a sense of awareness that we have to come together to end this and kind of the disparities and the discrimination that goes on in the eyes of police and in the eyes of people not understanding the vulnerabilities of people who get stopped for broken traffic light and end up dead mysteriously.

So, you know, part of what David and I have always done, and it's strange because recently we had a conversation about race, and I'm telling you, for 35 years, we've never had the conversation.

We just never have.

It's never.

It's never come up.

And it got me thinking that, you know, it's kind of always been there.

But I, you know, and I talk to a lot of musicians that, you know, you create love songs, and you're kind of afraid to discuss anything that's out of the realm of, you know, you just want to be safe a little bit with the music.

Not that the music is safe, but the message is safe.

And I think we'd had enough of that.

And it was time to say something that had to do with social discourse.

No, I was going to say, I think that, Mike, to a certain extent, there is a feeling with many people that things are good, that in your mind, that race isn't really considered.

And then, of course, over the last few years, there's sort of been permission to just maybe access the, what I consider the worst part of people.

And it's sort of like, been sort of given permission, tacit permission, that that's okay.

And it's not.

And, of course, there is still a lot of racism.

And so it's good for, you know, Mike and I have worked together for years, and it's.

We're working on music together, and it's, doesn't.

We never, we, it's not as if we never, you know, came across, had situations where all of a sudden it was like, oh, you know, I remember one time, it's like, well, you know, he doesn't, that that guy's someone in the music business.

He's not really that crazy about us, because he doesn't really want a white person involved in black music or, or vice versa, obviously, is mostly the case, so.

But, man, but most of the time, we just kind of like, went, oh, the heck with it.

You know, we're just, we're just doing this.

I mean, this is what we're doing because this is the modern world and we are, we are the modern world.

And that was part of the incentive maybe to, you know, Mike always says to call the group the system and say the system is usually considered a bad thing, but we are the new way of doing things where it just doesn't, things like that don't matter.

And we work together to make better.

To make music.

To make music better.

And I think it's really interesting your backgrounds, musically, Dave, I know you were playing, playing classical music growing up in, but you were really into funk music.

A white guy getting into the funk world.

And Mike, you played in all these funk r and B bands, but you were always looking to England and electronics and, you know, mostly white world over there.

So you guys brought it together.

Make the system.

It's a really cool story that I.

Think, to a certain extent, we go, oh, yeah, yeah, that's true.

And it's, and it's true because it's a story, and stories are good to have, but we always kind of went, you know, we're just going beyond the story.

We're just, we're really making music.

It's not, this is not just about, this isn't about just two people, okay?

We're different.

So we're going to decide to work together.

No, it's just.

Right.

Oh, well, we want to make music together.

That's all.

It's, you know, to an extent, yeah.

So, so for a band like the system, you know, getting together and working together, you guys, 82 and then the same kind of story.

And I mean, Mike talk, we were talking off air about the game has changed you.

Do you think it'd be that difficult to get noticed and become a major act that quickly today?

Absolutely, I think it would be.

Well, here, let's put it this way.

Artists that are big today, they didn't start yesterday.

They started five years ago, building up their following, releasing, you know, just releasing music in a different way.

So it's not like the largess happened overnight for even a lot of the artists that we see now.

Same thing.

We were, we were out there grinding.

We just didn't have a record.

But we were grinding, and, you know, we had the intention of making records.

So, you know, we'd have to have started this new record, like, five years ago.

Right.

Basically because, you know, as and as we're seeing now how important it is to build up a platform and followers on that platform, because it's part and parcel to how you distribute and play and get reach with your music.

You know, in some ways, we're left a little.

Left a little bit out of the pocket because, you know, when.

When we started out, we were playing a lot of bands.

We were meeting a lot more people.

We were a lot more, you know, reachable.

And we came up kind of in a generation where you kind of maintain some sense of privacy.

You know, you didn't broadcast every meal you ate.

You didn't broadcast you walking your dog, you didn't book.

And now you kind of have to do that in order to get the kind of reach you need to really get your music out there.

They say you got to put yourself out there, which is kind of what, you know, we found to be a little bit different than what.

What happened during our heyday.

Yeah, I mean, I have to agree with that.

And then also add that there's.

I think that there's even then and now there's exceptions to every sort of convention of thought about how you achieve, quote, success.

And I think back then, there were also many, many bands trying for years to be successful.

Now, the actual, real thing that you really need, of course, is magic in the music and in the form of a hit song, in the form of actual notes and melodies and beats that move people emotionally and physically.

And there were many people who were trying to build up fan bases in the ways that were available at that time.

And we were.

That was really our story at the time.

Although we individually were working on music all the time, and most.

Most people that are making music have been doing it for years.

They're trying to get better at their craft, and then they have maybe a moment, or sometimes more than a moment when they achieve it.

And they.

And we had that moment.

And so that our story about, like, you know, recording a song one night before we went in the doing, writing a song the night before, then being in the studio for one day and then getting a record deal the next day and having the song on the radio in a month was a rare thing back then.

Those kind of things still happen now in the form of, um.

I know that my.

My, uh, my daughter's boyfriend has a song that has.

He wrote the track to someone else, wrote a melody to it, and it has gotten 17 million streams on Spotify in a few weeks.

Wow.

So.

And this is a person who's 14 years old who lives in a rural area and made a video in his bedroom.

So.

But it's an unusual piece of work.

It's not really a music.

It's not about the music.

It's about the somewhat about the visual and about the amateur quality of it that is just perfect for the moment.

So there are many exceptions to the rule now and then.

There were then, too.

So I guess that's my only point.

And the missing thing, of course, the most important thing is having something magical in the music itself.

Yeah.

Always nice to speak with these guys, David Frank and Mike Murphy of the system, one of my all time favorite groups, and they're making new music.

People.

Get up.

We're going to play that a little later into the interview right now, but we're going to go to your last full length release, which was an outstanding record.

System overload.

And the track is no fear of flying, which, you know.

Tell us about this track.

This is one of my favorite ones.

Off.

Off this.

Cut off this record.

No fear of flying.

No.

David, you go in.

Yeah.

You know, no fear of flying is like.

It's just a fantastic track.

You know, just someone.

I mean, just someone on.

On.

On instagram.

I can't remember the person.

Mike, I know you've seen this video before also is like, doing kind of like, I guess, a thing where he's singing it in the car and, you know, I guess maybe it's for tick tock.

I don't know, whatever.

Whatever tick tock is, I'm not exactly sure, but it is something.

So there's, you know, he's singing the song fear of flying in the car, and it just reminded me how, you know, no fear of flying is.

Has, like, a little bit of the character of don't disturb this groove and other songs of that type where we.

That we've had even you're in my system, and I can't take losing you from the experiment albumen, where they have.

Where it has a chorus that can just go on and on and feels like you're kind of floating freely somehow above everything and feeling euphoric, and it achieves that feeling.

So let's give a listen to it right now and also give you the particulars.

You can go to the system music.com and the new track, you can download it from Bandcamp, I think.

Yes, Bandcamp.

Okay.

Any other spots for the new track, people get up the system.

Well, you know, that's another thing we learned, that it takes a while once you release things for it to be available on all the platforms.

So at this point now, today as we sit, it's available on all music platforms.

Okay, cool.

So we'll get into it right now.

You also can get this whole release system overload LP.

And this is the track called no fear of Flying.

David Frank and Mike Murphy coming back in just a moment on Joe Kelly radio.

Thank you, Joe.

That's no fear of flying from the system.

Mike Murphy and David Frank join us, and I'm really honored to have them.

That's from system overload here on Joe Kelly radio.

And, you know, I've told the guys this before, but, you know, I got into radio.

And that's when I got into djing.

Right.

The summer of 82.

And it just, you know, your music, I got to thank you once again.

It just so influential on my musical career.

Behind.

Behind the mic.

Oh, that's great.

And being in New York City, I went to NYU that September, and, you know, we talked about it.

It was just blowing up on all the stations there and Frankie Crocker and.

Yeah, you.

I mean, do you think back to those days?

And it must be amazing how we talked about.

Let's first talk about its passion.

Maybe that'll build the story up again about you guys recorded it, and the next day we're hustling the song and talk about that.

Okay, you know, I'll start and then Mike, and continue.

Do you know the track?

What had happened in the previous, like, six months before that?

You know, I was playing in a lot of record.

I was playing with a lot of different bands, including Madonna, who was not famous at the time, you know, yet, and a lot of other bands and playing synthesizer and piano on, you know, and doing sessions for people like Lenny White, the drummer from Return to Forever, you probably know him from.

And anyway, so.

But I got, you know, a hold of a.

I bought a DSX, an Oberheim DSX, which is a sequencer, which is basically like, musicians out there know, logic, logic, logic, which is logic or Ableton.

It's like a sequencer, but it doesn't have.

It didn't play drums.

It just played midi.

It didn't have.

There wasn't midi.

It actually did it with control, voltage and gate.

But it did actually.

You could actually play something and it would play back what you played on the instrument, not a recording.

So I got that.

And then I finally got my hands on a DMX, which was a drum machine, which went with it along with the Oberheim Obxa.

And I had a mini mode, and I made a track.

I started making tracks, and I did a couple of them before, but then I focused all my energy on one track.

And I had some studio time, and Madonna was going to sing.

Madonna came up with a melody for my track, which I spent, by the way, a month, you know, writing.

It wasn't quick, and I spent a long time doing it.

And then the night before we were going in the studio and Madonna had a melody, a melody.

She was singing on it and lyrics.

And the night before we were going in the studio, she called me and said, frankie.

She called me Frankie.

I can't do this because my friend Steve Bray, who maybe, you know, Steve Braytoo, he's a very good friend of mine now, too, so.

And Mike, so he, you know, he's, he's upset that I'm going to do this with you.

And so I'm.

Unless he can co produce it, you know, I don't want to do it.

So I said, okay, well, I don't want to do that because I want it to be all electronic.

I got up and I went, okay, well, that's it.

You don't have to do it.

And so I called then.

I thought, who am I going to get?

I need to get.

And I remembered Mike Murphy, who I had heard singing and was just blown away by.

So I.

So I called him and he said, okay, I'm going to take the day off from work tomorrow, and I'm going to do this.

And we went down to the studio and I played him the track and then.

Go ahead, Mike.

Well, yeah, so he called me over the night before, actually, and said, hey, I have this track, but the catch is you.

We got to record it tomorrow.

I was like, okay.

So not knowing, you know, I knew David because we initially met through the band clear when they were looking for a keyboard player.

And I was like, my mentor was this guy, or is this guy Dennis King, who was a mastery engineer at Atlantic?

So he said, hey, I'm going to see this singer.

Was it Andy Lerner?

David Lernere?

Yeah, I want to go see this singer, Andy Lerner.

Come with me.

So we went to this club on the upper east side, I think Upper west side, and I just kept noticing David's playing.

And I knew that clear needed a keyboard player.

So I was like, dennis, I mean, that, you know, the keyboard player is really good.

Maybe you should try to get him for clear.

And as it turned out, David ended up as a keyboard player on the road with the group clear, where I was the road manager and sound Mandev.

So I didn't know anything else about the type of music or the style of music he was playing.

So when he invited me to the studio, I was really shocked and surprised because it was exactly the style of high energy electro that I'd been listening to kind of coming out of the UK.

And he had it all there.

And I was like, this is.

This is amazing.

So I knew then this was the moment to actually put my whole thing on the table.

And I just started singing, like, a little chorus, a little hook.

I didn't have any of the other words or any of the other parts.

He was like, all right, that's great.

That's great.

I mean, this happened in, like, the course of maybe 15 minutes.

So that's great.

That's great.

So finish writing it and then I'll pick you up tomorrow.

We'll go to the studio.

I don't know why you had the confidence that I could actually write, I don't know, melody, the lyrics.

And, I mean, if you know, in times of passion, this was a song with.

With moments.

This was a song with interludes.

This was a song with an intro.

And, I mean, it was.

There's a lot going on in there.

But I guess I've been writing that song my whole life because it just.

It poured out of me.

It just poured out of me that night.

And the next day he picked me up.

We went to the studio, we recorded it that day, did the vocals, the background vocals, mixed it.

I think we left the studio, like, I don't know, one.

Or.

02:00 in the morning.

Yeah.

Maybe even later.

Later, yeah.

I got home.

Yeah.

Because I kind of remember it was kind of dawn, right?

Yeah.

So at the time, I lived in my mother's basement and I had, you know, full band gear and a really good sound system down there.

And I remember putting the cassette on and just saying to myself, this is it.

This is.

This is.

No one can deny this.

This is it.

So that morning, I called Dennis King and I met him at Atlantic Studios on Broadway.

And what is it?

59th Street.

60th street.

At the mastering studio.

And he cut three acetates, one of which I still have, and I had met two or three people in the record business because of my work with clear and because I was kind of more in the industry and meeting people all the time.

I met Jim Delahant and Ray Caviano.

So they were two people that I knew who had said to me, if you ever come up with something, give me a call.

I'd love to hear it.

They said, sure, come over.

Both of them were very receptive.

First I met Ray Cavallano, whose office was just down the street from Atlantic records, Atlantic studios.

So I went to see him.

I played him the acetate.

He said, oh, I love it, I love it.

I want to put this out.

I said, okay, well, I have one more meeting and I'll get back to you and let you know.

So that meeting was with Jim Delahant, God rest his soul.

He passed away earlier this year.

So I went to Atlantic records at the Rock, went upstairs into the office.

He said, oh, sure, come in, come in, come in.

Play me what you have.

So I played him about 30 seconds of it, and he said, hold on just a minute, hold on.

So he goes into the back to a door and out comes a giant of the music business who I had respected for a long time because he was the youngest president in the history of Atlantic records.

You know, he signed Led Zeppelin, Cream.

He signed so many of the big rock bands that I was enamored of.

And he comes into the room, he sits down in a chair with his back facing me.

He puts the record on, and about a minute later, he turns around with this big giant smile on his face, and he said, you've got yourself a record deal.

So I go downstairs, I'm like, I'm blowing up with excitement inside.

I go downstairs to a phone booth and I call David.

I said, david, I said, we have a record deal now.

We didn't even have.

We didn't even have a name.

We hadn't thought that part out.

So that's how quickly it happened for us.

And then it was on the radio in three and a half weeks.

Yeah.

Now, who was Frankie Crocker?

The first one to break it in markets?

Yeah, okay.

Yes.

Frankie Crocker.

Yeah.

You know, we're friends with Chris Jasper from the Isaac Brothers.

Yeah.

You know, every time they come to the studio, his wife Margie, she was the music director at BLS.

I don't know.

I remember her name.

I remember her name.

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

So Margie yeah.

And I, because I mentioned Frankie Crocker.

She goes, oh, you know, I used to be the music director at BLS.

I said thank you, because there was so much great music now.

Right?

And it was a promotion.

Since we're mentioning names, there was a guy named Juggie Gale who was a promotion guy who took it.

Didn't your uncle know him or something?

David, what was your name?

He was actually, he actually worked as a promotion guy when my aunt Mildred was working for Irving Berlin in the late forties.

And he was that old then in the eighties, he was like, he was like almost 80 years old, and he was still promoting dance records.

And he would show up at the dance clubs, paradise garage at five in the morning.

This guy was nuts.

He was 80 years old.

And what about music, juggy?

Was he built like a jug?

No, he was this little guy when.

What was he, like, five foot two, maybe on a good day, in heels?

Look him up.

He had a, he had a record label that actually did really well.

Even after that, he had this label dance label thing that he had.

Anyway, yeah, that's just an aside, but yeah, that's the story of its fashion.

And then it became a big hit in, you know, I got asked, I.

Gotta ask Frankie this question.

Did Madonna ever say I missed out on a big hit?

Yes.

Oh, that's right.

She.

When I came, when I came back, when I dropped Mike off at his, at his mom's house in Queens, we, the studio we did it at was called Bolognese studio.

It was out on Long island.

And when I drove back in in the morning, like Mike said, it was the morning.

And I drove back in and I stopped at the music building, and, which is the place where I had my loft that I shared.

And Madonna was living in the hallway.

She had not literally, she was borrowing quarters for apple juice.

She didn't have anything.

And I played it for her in the hallway of the music building.

And these hallways were like kind of cockroach infested.

I don't know why.

We were, we were sitting on the floor, I remember, and she started banging her fists on the.

On the floor and going, damn it, I can't believe it.

I could have had a hit.

You're gonna.

You guys are gonna get a record deal with this.

And this is before Mike called me.

And then when I got home and I was playing.

I was playing it for my.

I.

My girlfriend.

Then he called me and it was like, sure enough, we had a record deal.

She was.

Yeah, she was upset that she hadn't done it, but it was nothing like it might not have been a success.

Mike is, you know.

Yeah, yeah.

I did it completely differently than she.

Right, exactly.

Totally different.

So it's your song, both of you guys, nobody else's.

So, yeah, we're going to get into it right now.

We're here.

Joe Kelly, radio.

And we'll talk a little later on about their new album, which is going to be coming out hopefully very shortly or not too far off, but let's give it a listen right here.

It's passion, the system.

Yeah.

All right.

Another great song.

That was the first hit from the system.

It's passion and was also on the album sweat.

David Frank and Mike Murphy here, joining us on Joe Kelly, radio.

And before we talk about what's going on today, 19, I believe it was 84.

You guys produced a record for attitude.

And did you guys produce it?

That's another great record.

Was it because you had so many songs that obviously you couldn't put out two or three records a year?

What was the thinking behind that?

Well, we kind of invented it.

So once again, Frankie Crocker, he would always say on his radio show, we got the juice.

Right, David?

Right, that's right.

He did say that.

Right.

Kind of a slogan.

So just.

Just to rewind the pages back, then you actually could record and get a record out in a week now.

Yeah, you can do that now.

But then you could actually do that.

If there was a slogan that people were saying on the street, or if there was, you know, some kind of hook that was on another record that didn't make a hit, you could kind of cut it.

So we made this song.

David had a track, and I used the.

We got the juice hook and we said, wow, you know.

Cause Prince had his little offshoots.

And I was like, we could do that, too, David.

We could do that.

I was like, we're gonna make attitude.

And we had.

We've been working with Cindy Maisel and Chris Kello, who's a fantastic keyboard player, actually, who toured with us, and, you know, continues to be a friend, a great friend to this day.

So we put together this group with one single, thinking that that would be it.

But the single took off in New York, so they came back and said, hey, you guys want to make an album?

Right, Dave?

It was a similar situation.

That's right.

We did that on the label was.

It was RFC.

I think it was on RFC, right.

And we had, we had, by that time we had had.

You're in my system was a big song on bls and all those stations too.

Yeah.

You know what, I kind of, I remember now, I piggybacked that because after we had a hit with this passion, Ray came and said, you owe me one, you owe me a record because that was supposed to be my record.

He started beating his fist on the floor.

On the floor of the music building.

No, I'm just kidding.

Right?

So that's how that came up.

And Cindy's one of the biggest studio musicians in New York, right?

Oh, tremendous, tremendous singer and touring, you know, with God, she's been, she's been out with everybody.

Pink Floyd.

Wow.

She's just a tremendous singer.

Yeah.

So the systems.

Mike Murphy and David Frank joined me here on Joe Kelly radio and we've been talking about the beginnings of the system and radio and become all this notoriety and I want to, you know, last, last time you were on, you guys were talking about, you know, you're working with Prince and Rick James on that tour and I was listening back to some of that and that must have been incredible tours, but a little strenuous at times, right?

Because you were for clear.

We're going back to clear.

David was in the band and Mike, you were road manager, right?

What did that entail as road manager?

Well, I was like road managing and doing the live sound at the concerts.

Oh wow.

Road managing is you do everything, you're on call roadie, live sound, you're collecting the money, you're doing the payroll, you're directing them.

I mean, literally I cut my teeth and learned every part of the business.

You know, I met all the promoters.

I think it helped us at some point later because, you know, I knew a lot of these promoters, I knew a lot of, a lot of these.

The real road guys, they've been doing it forever.

So when we came on the scene, they were very helpful, you know, this, the sound companies knew me, they were very helpful.

They really kind of guided us through, particularly having never been in a, been a performer in a touring band.

So, you know, there was this kind of camaraderie and also a lot of people rooting for me, you know, like because I had been on road crews and these guys, a lot of them, you know, may have at one point wanted to be a musician and make records and stuff.

So kind of vicariously through me they had that experience.

So we were lucky to get a lot of help from, you know, other people that we had met on the road.

So you guys were clear was the opener and then Prince and then Rick James, I think, on the order on that triple bill, right?

Yeah, clear was the opener, prince and then Rick James, which was one of the greatest tours of all time.

It really could.

You tell right away, like the second album, Prince was going to be the great performer that he was.

Oh, yeah, he was tremendous.

That tour was one of the best tours ever.

The competitiveness, you know, Prince with his small band and his six foot of stage was able to light it up and really, really give Rick James a run for the money.

And you could, you could tell.

You really could tell he was going to be a big star, right?

Wow.

And Rick James, of course, a legend in his own, you know, just.

You're right.

What a great tour it must have been.

Oh, yeah, it was.

It was amazing.

So the systems right here, David Frank and Mike Murphy, and you guys have been working on new music.

We're going to, you know, in just a few moments, get into people get up.

What's working on this new record?

I mean, it sounds exciting, you guys working on a lot of tracks and on both coasts, but what is it going to be?

And you have a title, too, right?

Yeah, well, the title is time stretching.

And, you know, of course, there's a technical aspect of time stretching with music where you can take items of various tempo and stretch them to fit the framework of what you're doing now.

And in a lot of ways, it refers back to the way we make music.

It kind of encompasses the music that we started out with.

And then, you know, as you know, if you followed our music, we've gone through eras where the music became more sophisticated and kind of we've developed, continued to develop the sound.

So this record is a continuation of that idea.

Right.

And that's the way life can be.

You know, time stretching also.

Like, it kind of has a lot of meaning in terms of people about how time kind of folds over itself.

And sometimes you can kind of think when people go, wow, I remember whatever age you are, if you're in your twenties, you're going, wow.

I just remember when I was like eight years old and I was in whatever and it seems like yesterday.

And that's exactly what it is with life a lot of times and making music.

You know, you can make music for years and it still has just as much meaning as it did and almost seems like it's just out of sequence, you know, going, you know, from.

It's not necessarily all in sequence.

So do you guys prefer, you know, you know, for the latest, you guys have been indie artists putting out the music yourselves as opposed to when I, you know, you had to crank out a record every, every year.

And was it a lot more pressure back then or do you prefer it now?

Well, it was a lot more.

It was more pressure then, but I think I would.

I prefer to have the pressure.

How about you, Mike?

Listen, it's not just the pressure.

Look, when you're trying to be.

When you.

When you.

When you're making music, writing music, recording the music, that in itself is like a full time job.

So now presenting the music, getting it performed, getting it licensed, all of the ancillary stuff that goes along with making music and getting it out to the public.

Wow.

That's a whole other realm that a lot of times you kind of take for granted.

To be honest, we never really got.

We never really had a lot of pressure from the record company because we were doing something so unique.

They really couldn't figure out how we were doing it.

I mean, you know, it took a few years for other bands to come along and do it in a similar way in terms of the technology, but they basically kind of left us alone.

They gave us money and said, okay, we like your record.

We like to have the record.

Bye.

A certain date.

So for me, I didn't feel that pressure.

I think it's the same pressure we put on ourselves now to always kind of outdo ourselves and make the next better record.

Right.

But I definitely.

I definitely hope we can find a partner to help do that distribution promotion piece because it takes a lot of energy.

Yeah, exactly.

So, you know, the system, longevity, this, I guess it's 38 years together making music and still going strong.

And before we get into the newer cut, I wanted to play something from the second record, which.

Which I love as well.

Experiment.

I want to make you feel good, which kicks off the record.

And we'll come back and speak once again to David Frank and Mike Murphy of this system right here on Joe Kelly radio.

All right.

That is from the systems experiment.

I want to make it feel good.

Mike Murphy and David Frank join us.

And they great guys, and they've been on the show, and it's always an honor because they're, you know, they're one of the cornerstones of my musical upbringing.

Since the get go.

So let's talk about.

Oh, before I get into that, I want to give you, give you some insight.

We started telling people this is going to record, pre recording this, but it's going to be up on our site at a certain date in a couple days.

But musicians have been, like, texting or on social media coming out and they're happy you guys are on again, musicians.

So you guys are really respected in the business.

And I got to say, what's up to Reggie Washington basis from New York?

Hey.

And, you know, everybody's excited, so you, you guys probably hear that through the industry, right, your influence on musicians.

Yeah, we get a lot of people saying they can't wait.

I hear what we picked up.

Right, right.

There's been many, many people that have, that have come to us and said, you know, that they, that they became musicians actually from, from, you know, after, from being inspired by us, which is a great thing.

And David, I know, I know you're a big fan and a Bernie Warrell and George Duke, two of the greats who were on our show and passed away.

And you had a chance to talk with Bernie.

Right.

You guys met up.

Yes, I did.

I did.

I met up with him at the NAmm show.

That's right.

We must have talked about that last time we were on.

And not only.

Yeah, and that was, and when I talked to him, he said, I said, hi, you know, I've always wanted to meet you.

You know, you're like my idol.

I copied all the note, all the things that you played, and he went.

And he said, oh, that's nice.

I said, I'm David Frank from the system.

And he went, don't disturb this group.

And he started saying, it was great.

I mean, it was such a.

Because Bernie Warrell was like the guy, you know, parliament Funkadelic.

I would just sit there by the, you know, looking at the speaker and I.

Trying to figure out all the notes that he played and on everything.

Yeah, yeah, I told you that.

I might have told you this.

The biggest mistake I made in my radio career was when Bernie, he brought, came up from New Jersey with like three, four key birds, this keyboard tech.

And I only had, he only played like one, one and a half minutes on the keyboards because, well, we, I was happy Chris France and Tina Weymouth of the Tomtom plug came in because they're, you know, they're friends.

But I could have had Bernie do a mini concert in the studio.

Oh, my God, he was such a great musician, by the way.

George Duke lived in Topanga, which is where I live.

Topanga is right near Malibu in La.

You know, he came on the show because Jeff Lee Johnson, I don't know if you know, Jeff played guitar in his band.

He passed away, and we did a tribute, and George came on and George passed away, like, three, four months after.

That and as well.

Great guys.

Yeah, great guys.

So let's talk about what's going on today.

Time stretched in the lp, but the single people get up, which is really moving.

You've got some special guests on here.

Sandra St.

Victor and grandmaster Mellie Mel.

Talk about your affiliations and including them on this.

Okay, so it's odd because, actually, before I was a road manager with clear, I was a sound mandev on a tour.

On the tour with grandmaster Flash and the Furious five and the Sugar Hill gang and the sequence, we did a yellow school bus tour of the south.

Now, I don't know what year it was.

It must have been because it was before.

It was before Grandmaster Flash and Furious five blew up with.

What was the message?

The message?

The message.

Yeah.

I don't know what year that came out, but it was out.

But it was just starting to.

It was just starting to percolate.

So the Sugar Hill gang had a full, full on tour bus and grandmaster flash and a furious five.

We were literally in a yellow school bus, hard seats, and that door that the bus driver opens with the swinging arm.

I'm serious.

I'm serious.

So we're on the road, and what was great for me was I was getting paid a weekly salary, right, for the gigs, per gig.

And Sugar Hill Gang would tip me $100 to make sure they were louder than Grandmaster Flash and Furious five.

And grandmaster flash and Furious five tipped me 100 to make sure they were louder than the Sugar Hill gang.

I'm from Jamaica, Queens.

It's like, you know, it's not really.

It's not so ghetto like.

It's not.

It's very civilized, you know what I'm saying?

And these guys were a little rough around the edges, you know, from Newark, New Jersey, Plainfield, you know, a little rough.

So I can remember coming back home from the chore and having all this money, like, a lot of money, you know, more than I probably had ever made in music ever.

And just being very concerned that I might not make it.

I might not make it home.

But they found out how much money I had.

That's where I first met Grandmaster Melly.

Mel.

So, flash forward, I don't know, about 20 something years.

I did a single with Lloyd Harvey, a friend of ours who has a label out of the UK, and he had gotten Melie Mel to do the rap.

So we developed a relationship over time, and he always said to me, hey, if, you know, if the system ever does anything, you know, please don't hesitate to call me.

Man, I'd love to be on it.

So I took him up on that, sent him the track, and he responded, like, two days later.

Well, it took him, like, a week to actually respond and say he liked it, but I think maybe he hadn't listened to it or he was busy.

But when he finally heard it, he immediately said, man, I love this.

I'm on this.

Give me a few days.

And within a few days, he sent the wrap.

I don't even think I told David that I was going to send it to Mellie Mel.

But when I got it back and sent it to David, he just.

He loved it.

He loved it.

So that was kind of the beginning of it.

And then Sandra St.

Victor, she was in the family stand.

We were both signed to Atlantic.

Both of her bandmates I had known for years, going back to when I was in playing in club bands, you know, Jeff Smith was in a band called Common Sense, and my band, we used to kind of be competitive because we were both horn bands.

I'm going back a lot of years, and so I went to see the black rock coalition event at Lincoln center in the summer, beginning of the summer, and I heard her sing, and I'm like, wow, what a voice.

So when we decided we were going to release a song, and I'm building one, I was like, wow, I'd love to get Shaka Khan on this, but, you know, that's kind of a pipe dream.

So I thought, who else could do justice to the song and bring the fire?

It deserves a.

I reached out to Sandra, and at first, she was a little hesitant because she lives in the Netherlands, and she gave me recommendations, you know, well, why don't you get Audrey, why don't you get this one?

I was like, no, no, no.

I need your fire on this.

I need you.

I need that rawna.

She was like, well, you know, I'm not a soprano.

I'm not, you know, I don't see.

I'm like, no, no, that's what I need.

I need your edge.

So eventually, she acquiesced, and she sent me, like, a real quick demo she did, which was, like, perfect.

I said, okay, just add a little bit more hot sauce, and we are good to go.

So that's what we ended up with.

And she just did a fantastic job.

I can't say enough about it.

And then, you know, from that, we became, like real, real friends.

Like, I don't want to say pen pals, because now it's like you facetime each other.

But we really have gotten a deep, because she's always been on the forefront of black awareness and social issues.

And, you know me, maybe not so much, but she's inspired me in a lot of ways.

And it's been like a real, really wind in our sails as we continue to move this song forward.

I got a quick, funny story about Sandra St.

Victor.

She opened up for the time at tramps years ago, and the concert started, and all of a sudden, they looked like they were a little unsure on stage, like they were looking for somebody to the side of the stage.

They're like, where's Johnny?

Johnny Kemp was singing background for her, and he was in the bathroom.

So it started off.

They're like, johnny's in the bathroom.

And he came on stage a little embarrassed, but it was pretty funny.

She tore it up, the old tramps.

Yeah.

Yeah.

Absolutely.

Yep.

And how many.

How many tracks you got in the can already or almost ready to go?

But we should be hopeful.

I'm hoping we're finished in January and that we can release it in early March because I'm realizing now how long it actually takes to get all the pieces in a row.

So we've started with a lot of them, you know, getting the pieces, our ducks in a row, but it does take a lot to actually get the music out there.

Yeah, I think with, you know, vaccines and hopefully things are getting a whole lot better with the pandemic and everything.

I think music, it's just going to explode.

People are just ready to go out and do their thing.

You've been cooped up too long.

Yeah, yeah.

Get out of here.

Right.

Get to.

Get to the finish line healthy, right?

Yeah, absolutely.

Right.

There's a lot to do.

Like, it's like, you remember the idea of going out to dinner.

Yeah, right.

Or actually, how about having.

We're going to have a party.

Right, right.

Well, people unfortunately still doing it.

That's the problem.

But I mean, you know.

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

I know.

Most people, like us, are taking care of ourselves.

Yeah.

Right, right.

So I got to thank you, David.

Frank and Mike Murphy.

You guys are real special.

My radio showing and we're going to continue to show you the love here.

Okay, Joe, thank you.

Pleasure.

Thank you for having the system on your show.

We appreciate it.

You got it.

You guys always have a stage here, so you come back when the new record is ready to go.

All right?

Okay, great.

We're going to get.